Reforming NATO's Partnerships

SWP Research Paper Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs Markus Kaim Reforming NATO’s Partnerships RP 1 January 2017 Berlin All rights reserved. © Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2017 SWP Research Papers are peer reviewed by senior researchers and the execu- tive board of the Institute. They reflect the views of the author(s). SWP Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs Ludwigkirchplatz 34 10719 Berlin Germany Phone +49 30 880 07-0 Fax +49 30 880 07-200 www.swp-berlin.org [email protected] ISSN 1863-1053 Translation by Tom Genrich (Updated English version of SWP-Studie 12/2016) Table of Contents 5 Issues and Conclusions 7 NATO’s Partnership Formats: How an International Security Institution Adapts 9 The Four “Waves” of NATO Partnership Formats 9 1. Security for Europe: The Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and Partnership for Peace 10 2. Confidence-building and intra-regional cooperation: The Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative 13 3. Contributions to NATO operations: Partners across the Globe 15 4. 2014, the crisis year: Partnerships as a defence against external threats 18 The NATO partnership formats: A mixed track record 20 A Special Case: NATO-EU Relations 22 Conclusions 23 Abbreviations Dr Markus Kaim is a Senior Fellow in SWP’s International Security Division Issues and Conclusions Reforming NATO’s Partnerships Since 1994, NATO has created partnerships as an institutional framework for its relations with countries that cannot or do not want to become Alliance members. In the past 20 years, the circle of countries involved has become ever larger, the associated agenda ever more heterogeneous, and the goals pursued by NATO ever more diverse. The institutional prolifera- tion of partnerships contrasts increasingly with what is potentially expected of them. The existing formats are now overdue for an effectiveness check so that they can be prioritised politically. The Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) groups together twelve post-Soviet states, among others. NATO has supported them in reforming their respec- tive security sectors in line with western standards and bringing them closer to the Alliance. The forum also includes Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden, non-allied states that need no assistance with their domestic transformation. What matters to them is the security cooperation with NATO. The countries of the Mediterranean Dialogue (MD) – Egypt, Algeria, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Mauretania and Tunisia – were meant to receive NATO support primarily for cooperating with each other on security policy. In turn, this was intended to contribute to regional security. For a number of political reasons, however, the Dialogue has been only a limited success. The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), which aspired to intra-regional cooperation between Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, has likewise limped along. Saudi Arabia and Oman have been invited to join this forum, but have so far stood apart. Finally, there is Partners across the Globe (PATG), con- sisting of countries that, for various reasons, are strategically important to NATO or have extensively contributed to its operations: Afghanistan, Australia, Iraq, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Korea. Alongside this, there are consultations with India and China that to date have been informal. Special committees that handle relations with Georgia, Russia and the Ukraine – all of which are already members of the EAPC – complete the partnership pic- ture. Finally, NATO’s summit in 2014 created further partnership formats in the Partnership Interoperability Initiative (PII) and the Defence and related Security Capacity SWP Berlin Reforming NATO’s Partnerships January 2017 5 Issues and Conclusions Building Initiative (DCB), whose functions overlap to some extent with already existing formats. Most recently, two developments have attracted sustained attention to the NATO partnerships. First, NATO’s transformative potential and its experience in reforming national security sectors seem to be transferable to other regions. Such was the hope expressed during the wave of transformations in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, as well as for Ukraine and Georgia. Current efforts to support Tunisia in reforming its security policy underline this approach. Second, for political and financial reasons, NATO will only be able or willing to carry out fewer crisis- management operations in the coming years than to date. However, crises and conflicts necessitating a NATO intervention can still be expected to occur on the Euro-Atlantic periphery. It is likely to be the rule, rather than the exception, that such operations will be jointly planned and carried out with partners from outside the Alliance. Only a few years ago, this would have applied exclusively to international crisis management; given the crisis in the Euro-Atlantic security order, however, it could now also be the case in collective defence. Against this backdrop, NATO will need to reorganise its partnership policy. This should be based on a shared idea of how to order political priorities and institutional forms of cooperation, even though political con- siderations may differ greatly from case to case. The study is intended to contribute to this reorganisation process by analysing two key questions: a) What priorities should NATO members set in designing the partnership formats, given the most recent developments in the security environment? Should the focus be on transforming partner countries, or on their security cooperation with each other, or on “strengthening” them according to the Alliance’s terms? Should the level of cooperation be measured in terms of the operative usefulness to NATO or the Alliance’s potential influence in a specific region? b) What institutional formats can be derived from these priorities? A whole spectrum of reorganisation models can be imagined. NATO members could keep the existing structure unchanged because they assume that it is logical to use different formats for different security policy interests. Or else they might discard the current formats to make room for a complete restructuring. SWP Berlin Reforming NATO’s Partnerships January 2017 6 NATO’s Partnership Formats: How an International Security Institution Adapts A large number of academic studies addressing NATO’s it has had for the Euro-Atlantic area. There are further development since the end of the East-West conflict elements of international change, however, that have have analysed its institutional form from a conceptual challenged or continue to challenge NATO’s ability to perspective. Their main point of discussion tends to be adapt as an institution: the Balkan wars of the 1990s the reasons behind NATO’s continued existence and (meaning ethnic-national conflicts carried out by mili- behind its largely unchanged, core institutional char- tary means on European soil); the repercussions of acteristics. After all, the Alliance’s key task of guaran- Islamist-inspired transnational terrorism; the fragile teeing collective defence greatly lost in importance states on Europe’s periphery; and the wave of trans- after 1990/1991, becoming a merely residual function formations among Europe’s neighbours during the so- – at least until the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted in called Arab Spring of 2011. The assumption that these 2014. This school of research chiefly focuses on NATO’s new security challenges will be long-lasting is of pri- institutional continuity in the face of the changes that mary importance in determing NATO’s reaction. NATO have occurred in the international system.1 members have been prepared to adapt its institutional This study takes the opposite approach. It examines format only when they were convinced of the pro- NATO’s capacity for adapting its institutions to the found nature of the change and its significant impact changed international security parameters. It uses a on their own security policies. concrete example: the partnership formats that have Second, current research shows that transforma- become increasingly differentiated both regionally tions of international security institutions also express and functionally since the 1990s.2 Research into the the internal division of power between member states. way international security organisations change, or There is no need to go as far as some observers, who rather adapt, shows that a series of factors determines interpret NATO’s partnership policy as a direct deriva- whether new security formats are decided and what tive of the United States’ changed global strategy.4 specific shape they take.3 Given the US’s long-standing political hegemony with- First, the stages in NATO’s development – each of in NATO, however, it is appropriate that the partner- which reflects an additional functionality of the insti- ship formats should reflect Washington’s interests tution – should be interpreted primarily as a reaction more strongly than those of smaller NATO members, to the various changes or new phenomena in inter- or that these formats were not created against the will national politics. The end of the East-West conflict of the US government. At this juncture, it remains to takes pride of place in this, with all the consequences be seen what impact the domestic transition that the US has undergone under President Obama will have 1 Cf., for instance, Andrea Locatelli and Michele Testoni, “Intra- on the durability and effectiveness of the partnership Allied Competition and Alliance Durability: The Case for Promot- formats. This transformation goes hand-in-hand with ing a Division of Labour among NATO Allies”, European Security 18, no. 3 (2009): 345–62; Anthony Forster and William Wallace, an increased reluctance to shape the global political “What Is NATO For?”, Survival 43, no. 4 (2001): 107–22; Robert B. order. McCalla, “NATO’s Persistence after the Cold War”, International Third, the key to the permanence of international Organization 50, no. 3 (1996): 445–75. security institutions lies in their ability to adapt their 2 Cf.

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